by Bronwyn Hughes
The rusty Texaco star clung to its pedestal above Main Street, welcoming me back to my hometown. Beneath, a brightly painted visitor center had displaced the long-defunct filling station where we used to smoke cigarettes. Were they expecting tourists? I strained to see the bones of Mobjack Courthouse under a veil of self-consciously cute updates, like sidewalk bump-outs planted with native seagrasses.
Filed under Fiction
by Arya F. Jenkins
Eight years old I stood in
My red bathing suit bottoms on black soil
Enshrouded in a chapel of the
Largest greenest leaves I’d ever seen
Next to the pink ranch house in Key Biscayne
Filed under Poetry
by Sean Madden
The kid at Coyote Pond, six, maybe seven, a ruffled
head of hair, a neighborhood boy whose name
I once learned–he’s making me nervous, nervous
in a way I feel sheepish about, a way that’s borderline
irrational, the way he’s bouncing around the playground,
firing cap guns, shooting things only he can see.
Filed under Poetry
by E.H. Jacobs
I don’t know when the nickname “Pelican” completely replaced my father’s given name, but that’s what he’s been called since before I was born fifty years ago in a community hospital in Brooklyn, a hospital whose name has disappeared into the chasm of memory. My mom, his second wife, the one who stuck with him long enough to procreate, called him Pelican–not honey, or dear, or even asshole, which was how I heard his third wife refer to him. The first time I remember actually hearing his name was when I accompanied him to a doctor’s appointment and the assistant called out “Earl?”–and I looked around to see who was being summoned–before she called out “Earl Roberts?” and I saw him stand. Continue reading
by Lenny DellaRocca
The woman downstairs has hired a man to tear apart everything
she owns. Since her husband died
she carries grief around
in a suitcase of birthdays.
Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 